Chile toughens sentences in ‘Missing’ killings of Americans
Posted Jul 21, 2016 05:35:04 PM.
Last Updated Jul 21, 2016 08:20:41 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SANTIAGO, Chile – Chile’s Supreme Court has increased the prison sentences of two former military officers convicted in the 1973 killing of two Americans during the early days of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.
The ruling announced Thursday sentences retired Gen. Pedro Espinoza to 15 years, up from seven previously, and ex-Col. Rafael Gonzalez to three years instead of two.
Both were convicted in 2011 in the deaths of documentary filmmaker Charles Horman and journalist Frank Teruggi, who were detained days after the coup that brought Pinochet to power. Horman’s bullet-riddled body was later admitted to a morgue as a “John Doe.” Teruggi’s corpse was left in a Santiago street.
The disappearances were dramatized in the 1982 movie “Missing,” which starred Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek and won an Oscar for its screenplay.
